


Power Armour and Dragons

by Elchen_Warmage



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition, Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:00:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29611851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elchen_Warmage/pseuds/Elchen_Warmage
Summary: Nora hated the wasteland of the Commonwealth for everything it represented and the loss it reminded her of. So she decided to leave it via an unspecified teleport.Herah Adaar really wanted to be somewhere else other than the ruins of a temple that she was accused of destroying.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	Power Armour and Dragons

**Author's Note:**

> An idea that has been bouncing around in my head for the last few years. This past week the idea started to spew words at me so I had to write them down before the left me.

Nora sat on the battlements of the Castle and looked over the remains of what had once been her home. The locals called it the Commonwealth, she called it Hell. You had to be a hardy specimen to survive the dangers of the wasteland, falter and it would break you. Nora hadn't been hardy. Her husband had been the soldier, not her. It hadn't taken long for the cracks to form in the facade of the lawyer. Each person she had to kill on the trek across the ruins of the old world breaking her apart.

She was finally broken and had to put herself back together again. But not every piece had been put back. The new Nora that emerged was cold and hard. The soft pieces of a mother been replaced with the viciousness of a killer.

Oh, she still helped the people of the wasteland out, but now she rarely ever smiled. if raiders attacked one of her settlements, they had better hope they were all dead when it was all over because she had no mercy for her enemies. One settler remarked after having had to listen to raiders die slowly and painfully that he almost pitied the raiders. Almost, they had after all tried to kill him and his family.

Finally finding the Institute and getting her answers she worked so hard for did nothing but take the last bits of softness and erase them. She looked at the bedridden old man that claimed to be her son, she didn't want to believe it but she could see the semblance of her deceased husband. 

She listened to the pathetic tales that he told her and tightened her grip on her pistol. She hadn't awoken naturally; they had woken her. And not because he wanted to meet his mother, no, they wanted to see what she would do. Another twisted experiment, as if the last 200 years hadn't been enough.

She turned her back on the poisoned white halls and walked out. She might have left it at that and never have come back but the Institute wasn't an isolated place. Instead of just hiding, they terrorised and preyed on the people of the Commonwealth. Bile had risen in her throat and the memory of the banal claim that they knew better than surface dwellers and should rule them.

They wanted to know what she would do? She would show them. Nora didn't take long to put her plans into action. Only those underground would have missed the massive column of fire and smoke at the pride of the Brotherhood of Steel came plummeting to the ground. Their leader, Elder Maxson, had screamed at her until he had been silenced by the heel of her power armour. The destruction of the brotherhood hadn't been strictly necessary, but a patrol had almost killed her new synth friend Curie, and she wasn't feeling very generous after that.

* * *

  
Around her the Institute burned, the synths had thrown off their shackles and risen against their masters. Her false son had been waiting for her. She took him and turned his bed to view the destruction that burned through his home. He could watch his world come apart just like she had all those years when Nate was shot and her son taken from her.

"Good-Bye, Mother."  
Nora turned her head to look at the wizened old man beside her, "My son died a long time ago. You are nothing but an imitation. Were your life not about to end, I would kill you for that."  
"The Commonwealth needs the Institute."  
"No, they don't. They have survived just fine without you, despite you. I heard the tales of the Enclave and what they did down south in Washington. It's people like you that made this mess so many years ago."

The destruction of the Institute left her with a souvenir, the little synth boy that looked like what her son would have looked like at 10 years of age. She had almost killed him then and there. Pity had stayed her hand; it wasn't his fault that he looked like that or believed that she was his mother. He had been made as a toy for deranged madmen.

The boy was passed onto others and told that the woman that he thought was his mother had died some time back. To Nora that was the truth, Nora the lawyer had died when she broke and the person that emerged was someone else. She had thought to change her name, but no one used her name anyway.

* * *

  
Nora looked out over the Commonwealth, the ruins of what had once been her home, and felt nothing but hate for it. Nothing held her to this place of ruin, so she resolved to leave.

She checked her power armour, ensuring that everything was in place. Her X-02 armour was the most power armour in existence, dragged out from deep within the Glowing Sea. The initial paint job had been done for her by the Atom Cats. In the messed-up world of the Commonwealth they felt the most like the old world to her. 

Over the paint she had various trophies, a deathclaw skull on each shoulder and their claws over the gauntlets. She would have liked one of them to be of her first kill, but sadly she had not been in the right state to take it when she had killed and upon returning later, it had been carted away by scavengers.

Bags made from deathclaw hide were strapped to the back. Some contained cans of old pre-war food, others had as much ammunition as she could afford to take. Right beside the power port was a bag with virtually every power core she had ever scrounged. She left several for Preston to power the Castle with.

Nora strapped various weapons alongside the supply bags; pistols and rifles, both in conventional and energy. A couple of knives and a Chinese ceremonial sword. She smiled sadly as she tightened the sword in place, it was a sad reminder that both sides in the war had paid the price for the hubris of their leaders.

The seals on the suit hissed shut around her. Demon red lights in the eyes illuminated the world before her. Her left hand reached down, picked up her gatling laser gun and slung it up onto its shoulder holster. Her right hand held a massive blade from a blade of a vertibird. She leaned it against her shoulder, blade positioned in such a way that if she was attacked, she could easily cut down anything that felt stupid enough to attack her. And in the Commonwealth there was no shortage of stupid creatures and people.

Fully geared, the General of the Minutemen, Butcher of the Commonwealth, stepped forward onto the teleporter pad that had once taken her to the Institute. Preston stood to the side, distraught. He'd tried to convince Nora to stay but had been forced to give up. Sturges stood at the control panel and when the signal was given, activated. Without a destination, it was anybody's guess where she would appear. That kinda was a point. Maybe, just maybe, Nora would find someplace green, untouched by the ravages of the war.

* * *

  
The tall qunari with a set a larger curling ram's horns stood on the ledge and looked up at the massive green tear in the sky. "I have no idea how I going to close that thing," Herah Adaar commented. "It's so far up."   
"No," Solas said, "there is a rift down. It was the first one. Seal it and perhaps the Breach shall be sealed." Her attention was drawn down to the demon spewing hole below her.

They made their way down toward the rift, skirting around the red lyrium that grew from the ground. She didn't need Varric's warnings to avoid the stuff, the stuff made her skin crawl as she came close to it. Adaar could have sworn that she heard the stuff sing.

The vision of the past greatly confused her, she had been here, at the heart of the explosion, why could she not remember anything. Cassandra demanded answers and all she could say was, "I don't remember. I have no idea what is going on."

The pride demon that was spewed forth from the rift should honestly not have surprised her. The last few hours had thrown almost every terrible thing she could imagine at her. Demons were meant to be things she fought in the Fade, not outside it.

The arrows from Leliana's scouts just bounced off it and her spells skittered past, leaving it unharmed. "The rift!" Solas called out. "It's protecting the demon, disrupt it and the demon will be vulnerable."   
She looked closer at the demon could faintly see a trailing green line connecting it to the rift. "On it," she called out. "Cassandra, keep it busy."

Cassandra finished off the shade that tried to sneak on the group and focused her attention on the pride demon. She banged the hilt of her sword on her shield and yelled to draw its attention. And it seemed to work, the demon stopped trying to fry Varric with the whip of lighting it had summoned and instead tried on Cassandra now.

Adaar held her hand out toward rift, gritting in pain, and attempted to disrupt the demon's connection to the rift. The rift seemed to pulse and grew marginally smaller, behind her the demon screamed. The pulsing of the rift stopped and it started to grow. Her connection to the rift was severed and she fell backwards screaming. A large metal hand stuck out from the rift, followed by another and shortly an entire metal demon with glowing red eyes had pulled itself free of the rift. 

"Ram," Varric called out from the side. Adaar turn toward him and watched in horror at the growing form of a pride demon flying through the air at her.  
_Well at least dying being crushed by a pride demon is not the most inglorious method of death._

The demon's flight toward her was disrupted with a loud clang. The demon's path was diverted by a massive slab of metal, that she hesitated to call a sword, held by the metal demon. "Get up," the metal demon said. The terrifying visage of another horned demon mounted on its shoulder looked back at her. 

The pride demon roared and charged at the metal demon. The metal demon moved out of its way with a smooth sideways motion and met its legs with the edge of its massive blade. The beast swept off its feet and sent headfirst in to pile of rocks. "Pathetic. Deathclaws and smarter and faster." Adaar watched as the metal demon brought its blade down upon the pride demon's back and left a gash. "You're a tough one, I'll give you that, but honestly, you got nothing on a super mutant," the metal demon sounded condescending.

The pride demon stood back up with a speed that belied its size, only to straighten up into the oncoming path of the Metal demon's blade. The two met with a crunch and the demon staggered backwards. It opened its mouth to roar and was met with the blade again. The next blow just bounced off.

Adaar realized with horror that she had been watching the fight while ignoring everything around her. She went back to disrupt the rift when she has pulled back a thwump sound behind. Turning around, she witnessed a green glow emanating from the demon's mouth before its head turned into a glowing green sludge. "If in doubt, feed the damn thing a plasma grenade." The metal demon swung its blade onto its shoulder and turned to look at the gathered group of fighters. "So, you kids need any help."


End file.
